The wind stilled.
Not the natural breeze that rustled leaves or whispered through crumbling towers—but the deeper, causal wind, the one that carried momentum from past to future. It stopped. And in its stillness, something… arrived.
Darius stood at the summit of a ridge overlooking a memory that had never happened.
Below him lay a village. One that had burned a decade ago. Or would burn a decade from now. Or perhaps never existed at all. It shimmered like a thought caught mid-formation—real enough to cast shadows, but not solid enough to reflect light.
Kaela narrowed her eyes. "This place is… a bleed."
Nyx crouched beside her, twin blades half-drawn. "It shouldn't be here. And yet, it's written into the ground like a dream someone forgot to forget."
Darius said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the figures now emerging from the air itself—like reverse echoes, forming not from voices past, but from possibilities denied.
